portfolio > SmithTownsend Collaborative

The Triumph, Vol. II

at The Sculpture Center
wood, clay, and mixed media drawings
The Chronicles of the Triumph!
book of mixed media drawings

Ship/Failing for Artfields 2019: Brandon C. Smith and Travis Townsend are the SmithTownsendCollaborative. Brandon's sculptures are very much like 3D paintings, and the big abstract blobby form seems a bit planetary with the addition of Travis's built construction that seems to have landed on it (and tethered itself down). And the small empty chairs, while signaling a scale change, suggest those missing or an abandonment of the structure. Overall, this attempt and failure is made more real by this particular site (The McNair Life History Center).


view of the big nothing..... for LAL 2015: Now in our ninth year of engaging in collaborative projects, SmithTownsendCollaborative presents view of the big nothing from an abandoned perch atop pink meat pod island (with Godbird watching). As we've done before, we've overlapped our visual languages to try to create something that neither one of us would make on our own. And this work picks up on some of the narratives our past projects have suggested while attempting to thoughtfully contribute to the exhibition's theme put forth by LAL guest curator Georgia Henkel. The wall-drawn component connects via a long hinged wooden "chain" to a rather large pinkish meaty-looking pod of Brandon's creation. On top of the pod is a lonely little remnant of a brick house with an empty chair in it. The chair views the big empty blob on the wall as Godbird (the strange-looking painted bird sculpture) watches from his high perch on the wall. There are some other components, too that add to the narrative possibilities. So, not love of emptiness or fear of emptiness so much as just normal, dumb, lonely-human-on-a-rock-in-a-big-void emptiness.


The Triumph! for The Sculpture Center 2010: There are various things that, as an individual and as a society, we pull throughout our lives. We trust and vigorously defend our ideals, our history, and our future as good. Upon closer inspection, however, it becomes apparent that who we are is often very different from what we say we are. Are these values that we comically (or is that tragically?) carry with us into the future still viable, correct, or morally defensible? Struggling, The Triumph! seeks to articulate this ambiguous but overwhelmingly present dichotomy.